This is one of those rare cases where what is being said is less interesting than who says it.
What: Reddit stock is junk, the IPO will fail hard, and anyone investing on it is begging to lose money. I believe that most people discussing this in Lemmy already know that, so the info isn’t new here.
Who: Forbes. Forbes’ target audience is investors; greedy vulture capitalists love it. So if Forbes says “it’ll sink!”, investors are less eager to buy stock, and that sinks the stonks even further. So what Forbes says is often a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I’m glad that Forbes is doing it. I want to see Reddit die.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 10 months ago
When I look at those numbers I think “Apollo was made by 1 dude with some occasional help from another person. Reddit is throwing half its budget and 200+ bodies at its app and site, and it’s a fucking disaster.”
bus_factor@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Different goals. The goal of Apollo was to make a good app. The goal of the official reddit app is to show you ads and siphon money off you.
I guarantee you a good chunk of that R&D money is for making ads more profitable and other monetization.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 10 months ago
To be fair, the point of Apollo was to also make money. But it was to make money by selling you things that made a nice experience nicer. Reddit makes money by selling you stuff that makes a shitty experience slightly less shitty.
Kinglink@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Spot fucking on.
Ever have a good app? Something you like using but it’s by a corporation but that’s ok, because it’s a good app and does what you want? And then they start adding more features to it, and it slows down, and it’s more annoying and it keeps offering services you don’t want, and it changes and it morphs and it becomes a shit app.
Hell I’ve watched Whisk become something I liked using to something worthless now it’s Samsung food… Switched to using CopyMeThat which actually also gets me recipes from sites that you can’t just read the recipes from, and that’s ALL it does (well recipe book/shopping cart/meal planning, which is what it’s designed for.)
I’m just sick of “How do we make more money” instead of just being an app that does what it says. Gaming is going down the same hole, sadly.
Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I get your point and you’re not wrong, technically . Technically that is what Reddit is trying to do but you need to remember that this is Reddit. They fucking suuuuuck at everything.
I remember years ago a disaffected ex employee wrote something about what it’s like to work the and in just remember thinking to myself: “Imagine going in to work and they call an important meeting, all hands, to discuss “brigading” and then, without an ounce of irony they proceed to sternly discuss this important topic.”
Just imagine those little snot nosed shots puffed up with so much self importance discussing how these “brigades” are destroying their “bastion of free speech”.
I thought I was going to pule in my own mouth again just going this.
CosmoNova@lemmy.world 10 months ago
We just have to look at how much the CEO and COO paid themselves last year to know the whole thing is just a huge grift.
phcorcoran@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The comparison is even more apt when you remember that the official Reddit app also used to be great and the most popular 3rd-party app called AlienBlue, which was purchased from 1 guy and rebranded a decade ago.
It’s pretty clear that the reason why the official Reddit app isn’t good is because a good experience for their users isn’t their goal.
Stovetop@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yep. The fact that the app is still so bad after so much time has gone by indicates that this is the desired product that the company wants to offer. And after realizing that they were still using users to better competitors, their solution was to destroy the ability to compete rather than improve the product.
They like the app as-is, with all of the terrible performance and UX that goes along with it. They’re getting user engagement metrics and other telemetry data, more control over ad delivery and the content users see (including astroturfed sponsored Reddit content), and more monetization.
Third party apps, like Apollo was and AlienBlue used to be before it, cared only about providing a good user experience. It just happens that users typically prefer experiences that aren’t trying to capitalize their every interaction, and companies apparently don’t like that.
DBT@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Alien Blue wasn’t rebranded. They bought it, called it the official app (with the name Alien Blue) for a little while, then launched their own app and stopped supporting AB.
SomeoneElse@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Yeah I paid for alien blue pro or whatever it was called. Then they killed the app and gave me a year of Reddit premium (my memory is shit, idk the proper name). After a month or so I switched to Apollo, Reddit’s app was just so shit. I left when Apollo died and now only use dystopia (an app designed for blind users) for the infrequent times I visit Reddit. No adds. It’s almost read only. But it’s ideal for visiting niche subs that aren’t on lemmy without giving Reddit clicks/seeing ads.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You can also see this with the old website being much better than the new one and apparently there’s an even newer one that people who like the old new one generally hate.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 months ago
They are in tension with the more pressing goal of extracting revenue. But how do you extract revenue from a site that’s mostly just “user content” + “ads” in an era when ad revenue is plummeting?
Maybe if they increase the prices on Reddit Gold?
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Another difference was I was willing to pay for Apollo, whereas I don’t want to spend a dime on Reddit.
JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
Reddit has over 2000 employees.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 10 months ago
This is one of those things where, I totally feel for all the big tech employees who’ve been laid off, and it is ultimately the fault of the companies, but like, that’s just too much.
isles@lemmy.world 10 months ago
And so many unpaid moderators… Which is an acceptable trade when the site isn’t cashing in on your work.
iegod@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Wtf are they even doing.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 10 months ago
At least until they can automate them
Shouted@programming.dev 10 months ago
Seriously. Reddit is a glorified link sharing service with comments looking for a 6+ billion valuation. Christian and a couple backend devs could recreate it all in a weekend.
Reddit is hopeful that AI training is their golden ticket but in all reality they’ll only ever have one large buyer. OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, etc, don’t want something that Gemini already bought.
With all that out of the way, I don’t see very many companies lining up to license a dataset consisting purely consisting of left-leaning extremists with all non-echo chamber discussion being banned. I mean, look at how much trouble Google got in with an objectively racist Gemini that forced them to turn off human image generation.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Depends on the sub. The news, technology, and politics subs are 99% link sharing. The subs around DIY stuff, health, etc are often people sharing personal experience and advice. The latter is likely the most valuable thing for AI to crawl.
BudgetBandit@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Apollo… the wound that never heals.